State Representative Terry Morrow is happy to announce final approval of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to streamline the permit process involving wetland protection on agricultural land. The MOU between the Minnesota Bureau of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) concludes a process begun when Representative Morrow and Congressman Tim Walz convened a meeting in St. Peter of local farmers and others to talk about ways to reduce confusion, paperwork, and duplicated permit procedures.

Here’s a great example of local ideas creating more efficient government.  The new MOU arises from concerns that farmers in our area raised about permit processes that replicated one another, caused confusion, and consumed time and money.  We met at Waldo’s with State Conservationist Bill Hunt and others, who listened to these concerns and revived a workable solution.

Since the meeting in St. Peter with NRCS State Conservationist Bill Hunt and others, BWSR and NRCS staff met to develop the new MOU concerning the Minnesota Wetland Conservation Act (WCA) and federal Farm Bill’s ‘swampbuster’ provisions. The MOU, signed in late December 2009, is now in operation. It will put in place ‘a more simplified, coordinated approach’ to administering wetland programs as they relate to agricultural land, according to BWSR and NRCS.

I hear from folks about reducing government rules that do not achieve the goals originally intended or that make people fill out repetitive paperwork. This situation was a perfect example. In the 1990s, an earlier MOU authorized NRCS to act as a lead agency on behalf of the others. This common-sense approach saved time and money for everyone involved. It’s good that we were able to revive the MOU approach.

According to BWSR and NRCS, “This MOU is an important first step to improve coordination and efficiency in implementation of both WCA and Swampbuster on agricultural land, which will ultimately result in better service to landowners and greater efficiencies for the respective agencies. Work on many of the items contained in the MOU has already begun.”